We are Colonizing Mars

Many of us are excited and awed by what the famous Elon Musk eloquently presented at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he showed his medium term plans to conquer Mars and make it human inhabitable.

First he mentioned a motive that is the inevitable doomsday, apocalypse or extinction event on earth and the subsequent need to expand the human race existence to interplanetary realm. this is an interesting mix of pessimism that triggers exponential amount of optimism to work for the future. his vision is strongly determinate and optimistic fueled by a believe of the coming demise of earth as we know it.

I admit not having done any research beyond reading a few books in the past few years on the vastness and potentials of 4 unexplored earthly resources:

1-oceans

2-deserts

3-the poles

4-the inside of the earth (to harness energy)

but if we start with the notion that a doomsday is coming to earth. and we need to escape plus that space exploration is way more Hollywood level sexy, we as human race would normally ignore digging deep enough to explore potential in the above 4 untapped resources.

Add to this the fact where some early attempts to invest in exploring the above 3 were not fruitful makes them more unappealing to investor corporations and states.

What’s probably great is pursuing a big hairy audacious goal like colonizing Mars can produce unplanned-for technologies that help humanity achieve great leaps. These attempts fall in the complex or chaotic areas in Cynefin framework, where pursuing some specific goal can land us in a place we never imagined.

Finally regarding the atheistic reference to an earth doomsday, there is also a good probability that this day has interplanetary, galactic or even intergalactic impact; hence if it is a main reason to go live on Mars, we might as well put the same huge effort to colonize deserts, poles, oceans and perhaps the inside of the earth.